If the interval of reason of the madman lasts long enough, he will say to them: "Miserable mortals, who neither know the cause of my malady, nor how to cure it! Tremble, lest ye become altogether like me, or even still worse than I am! You are not of the highest rank, like Charles VI. of France, Henry VI. of England, and the German emperor Wincenslaus, who all lost their reason in the same century. You have not nearly so much wit as Blaise Pascal, James Abadie, or Jonathan Swift, who all became insane. The last of them founded a hospital for us; shall I go there and retain places for you?" N.B. I regret that Hippocrates should have prescribed the blood of an ass's colt for madness; and I am still more sorry that the "_Manuel des Dames_" asserts that it may be cured by catching the itch. Pleasant prescriptions these, and apparently invented by those who were to take them! MAGIC. Magic is a more plausible science than astrology and the doctrine of genii. As soon as we began to think that there was in man a being quite distinct from matter, and that the understanding exists after death, we gave this understanding a fine, subtile, aerial body, resembling the body in which it was lodged. Two quite natural reasons introduced this opinion; the first is, that in all languages the soul was called spirit, breath, wind. This spirit, this breath, this wind, was therefore very fine and delicate. The second is, that if the soul of a man had not retained a form similar to that which it possessed during its life, we should not have been able after death to distinguish the soul of one man from that of another. This soul, this shade, which existed, separated from its body, might very well show itself upon occasion, revisit the place which it had inhabited, its parents and friends, speak to them and instruct them. In all this there is no incompatibility. As departed souls might very well teach those whom they came to visit the secret of conjuring them, they failed not to do so; and the word "Abraxa", pronounced with some ceremonies, brought up souls with whom he who pronounced it wished to speak. I suppose an Egyptian saying to a philosopher: "I descend in a right line from the magicians of Pharaoh, who changed rods into serpents, and the waters of the Nile into blood; one of my ancestors married the witch of Endor, who conjured up the soul of Samuel at the request of Saul; she communicated her secrets to her husband, who made her the confidant of his own; I possess this inheritance from my father and mother; my genealogy is well attested; I command the spirits and elements."